Sword & Shield **Official news only** DLC Crown Tundra 22nd October

Everyone, I know some bug types are good ,like Scyther, I just meant early bug types in the game. Maybe they should balance it out so bug types later in the game have a chance, however I don’t really want bug types to have much of a combat advantage as it could make people stick to Pokemon from early in the game instead of trying to evolve Pokemon from later in the game.
Honestly, I just believe that we should keep the push to get new Pokémon, but I am not saying the bug types later in the game do not deserve a chance.
I'm not saying all Bugs need to be good. Early game bugs like Ariados and Dustox ARE poor, regardless of how good Bug type is in a vacuum. A Pokemon doesn't need a bad typing to be bad.
 
LGPE vs Gen 8 model comparison:
So they did change the shading to make them look more like cartoons instead of CGI. I like it.
I thought the lightning in that place was wierd, but now that I make a closer inspection it actually makes the game look similar to the style used in Dragon Ball FighterZ.

And I wholeheartedly approve that. It fits the models much better.
 

DHR-107

Robot from the Future
is a Member of Senior Staffis a Community Contributoris a Smogon Discord Contributoris a Pokemon Researcheris a Smogon Media Contributor
Orange Islands
Hey all!

While I am excited at the level of discussion here, please let's try and keep to discussing known information from the Direct and Trailer. It is OK to speculate loosely from the information we have, but lets not go crazy here. Let's also not go into depth on any rumours which have been posted here, or elsewhere since the Direct happened.

This is also not a meme reaction post thread either, keep that to any one of the number of Discords you probably frequent.

Chances are the mods and I will be keeping a close eye on this thread, and we will likely be running it like we did the last one, closing it after a few days of discussion because otherwise we end up down rabbit holes (heh) of pointless crap being posted. I'm probably looking at doing this on Monday afternoon/Evening UK time, to give people time to post over the weekend. Whenever we get wind of new information, the thread will be unlocked and you can continue to discuss whatever new has been released.
 
Does anybody else think that the reason that the game feels fenced in by backgrounds and such is just because the trailer is only of a demo version or something?
 
I kind of do too, as the black outline looks kind of out of place, especially since the characters do not have outlines
It looks like they actually do, at least in battle. I can’t get a good screencap since I’m on my phone but if you look at the over the shoulder view of the female trainer model around :31 in the US trailer you can see the outlines.

ETA: They’re even more visible in the closeup on the trainer’s shoe around :54.
 
Does anybody else think that the reason that the game feels fenced in by backgrounds and such is just because the trailer is only of a demo version or something?
Very unlikely. Programming in background barriers and fences (and their collision detection, etc.) just for a demo would be a lot of work for little benefit.
 
Does anybody else think that the reason that the game feels fenced in by backgrounds and such is just because the trailer is only of a demo version or something?
People are complaining about being fenced in, but Pokemon games have historically been all about limiting how far you can move in any direction. I remember playing RBY as a kiddo looking at the tall grass to the east and west of Pallet Town thinking maybe there were strong Pokemon there, which is why i couldn't reach those areas at the start of the game. It took a while to learn that the area around Pallet Town was never meant to be traversable for the sake of memory. They've also limited your access to move by placing trees or rock walls to demonstrate impassability.

Taking the design principles that worked in a 2D game that required four-direction movement and putting them in a 3d environment will naturally feel restricting, especially when the methods they're using to show you can't go somewhere is just...fencing. Literally fencing. No trees or unscalable rock walls. Fences wouldn't really stop an unattended eager-to-travel child from going somewhere normally and you can clearly see everything, which may lend to the feeling that the environment has a bunch of unfair blockades.

It also doesn't help much that the camera is always fixed facing north. They could do a lot more with their design if they embraced being in a 3D environment and unlocked camera control (or did something like Castelia City or Lumiose City again) but alas, with few exceptions like your house all the doors in this region face south so they're always in our largely stagnant line of sight.
 
Last edited:
Excited for Gen 8! A few points:

Sobble has great design potential IMO. Its hard to see final evo for Scorbunny and Grookey go that much further from 1st stage. I usually go fire but Sobble is calling out to me!

Looking at the fauna of England, we see deer, small mammals (foxes, weasels, hedgehogs), small insectivores (I.e bats) and marine animals. Based on map of Galor I wonder if they will have to go to regions outside of England as inspiration.

Regarding Graphics, it is gorgeous! Look at the the water and grass and it has realistic texture/movement.

As far as expectations, in hoping for more Mega Evo since France is so close to England (Kalos-->Galor)
 

Codraroll

Cod Mod
is a Forum Moderatoris a Community Contributoris a Top Smogon Media Contributor
Moderator
Does anybody else think that the reason that the game feels fenced in by backgrounds and such is just because the trailer is only of a demo version or something?
To be fair, this isn't entirely unplausible. Somewhere in my first impressions post I rambled on how the second town appears to be bordered by the same generic rolling hills as the first one, but it might just be that they used the same skybox in the early build on which the trailer is based. It may get a custom skybox of its own later, but it couldn't be finished in time for the trailer version. There are clips in the trailer where nothing has shadows, for instance, and the Japanese trailer has some details different from the English ones, so it is likely recorded using several different builds of the game. Some changes may still occur until the final release.
 
It also doesn't help much that the camera is always fixed facing north.
Never realized how much this hurts the series now that we're in full 3D.

It's even worse when you're traveling southward on a brand new route, you literally can't see where you're going accurately. I ran into this on that route south of Paniola Ranch in SM and couldn't put my finger on why I didn't like that route at all, now it all makes sense.
 
Two things I hope Gen 8 continues from Gen 7:

1) Regional Variants. I'd take 8/10 of the fully-evolved Alola forms over their original Kanto forms any day. I think this is a great way to give older, previously outclassed Pokemon a new chance at life. I can think of plenty of Pokemon that could use Galar forms and a handful of ideas as to what they could be like.

2) Hyper Training. It may seem a bit tedious on the surface, but I still find it less tedious to fish for Bottle Caps than it is to try and breed a Perfect IV Pokemon (at least unless you already have something like a 6 IV Ditto).
 
What clips were in the Japanese trailer that weren't in the other language(s)?
I've watched them simultaneously several times, the visuals last the same amount of time and occur in the same order. Maybe there are some minute render differences, but even then it's nothing significant. The only real difference is the logo. They used one international trailer to show the game.
 
To be fair, this isn't entirely unplausible. Somewhere in my first impressions post I rambled on how the second town appears to be bordered by the same generic rolling hills as the first one, but it might just be that they used the same skybox in the early build on which the trailer is based. It may get a custom skybox of its own later, but it couldn't be finished in time for the trailer version. There are clips in the trailer where nothing has shadows, for instance, and the Japanese trailer has some details different from the English ones, so it is likely recorded using several different builds of the game. Some changes may still occur until the final release.
I seem to remover that BotW was similar to this in either the trailer or the demo, where a lot of content was left out which made the game LOOK bare whereas in reality it is anything but.
 
Man Breath of the Wild really kicked Pokemon's butt in terms of competition and expectation. Before it kind of annoyed me how people kept bringing it up but now it makes sense when you look at it from the perspective of "being boxed in" and what the switch is capable of rendering. Sort of like "cat is out of the bag" style of holy crap why are they always holding back with a poor design philosophy.

They can definitely design monsters, music, and capture the environments. But when it comes to content and making those environments feel enjoyable going through it becomes worse and worse when your fanbase starts to see the little cracks in your design choices. Its not even about the gym formula anymore imo.
 

AquaticPanic

Intentional Femboy Penguin
is a Community Leaderis a Community Contributor
Community Leader
I'm fairly certain it's already been confirmed the jet evo for Scrobunny is fan-made. Besides, why would a Gen 8 mon have a size chart comparing it to the SM protagonist?


I do like the idea of it becoming Fire / Steel tho. A small theory roaming around is that the trailer foreshadows the future types, with Scorbunny running on steel gears, Sobble staying invisible like a ghost and Grookey banging on a rock
 
If you want a bit of nitpicking, you can look at the Trainer silhouette - it's nothing new. I don't know Gamefreak's design philosophy and work order, but it's a little bit suspicious that they'd use an old design for the height comparison when the new Trainer designs are a bit lankier.
There's also a stupid amount of original art out there - come on, it's Pokémon and Pixiv will be Pixiv - so this happens every single time. There's a pretty clear philosophy to all the designs - Fire, Water, Grass, a zodiac animal - so you have a relatively small spread of combinations and it's pretty easy to hit the jackpot.
Not to mention, even if it is actually a genuine leak, they'd have had more than a year to change the design. There's also the fact that it's called "Rabbit 3" - it's obviously a draft, and you'd see multiple of these per generation, only one of which is actually used in the game. Who knows, it could be a draft from an earlier generation (though not too far back, given, seeing as the design is obviously that of a post-gen-5 Pokémon).
I think the best bet if you were feeling really frisky would be to see if there was a character designer who resigned or otherwise lost their job right around the time it was leaked - because you bet that leaking something marked "Confidential" for a multibillion-dollar franchise that's pretty lawsuit-happy as of recently would get someone in trouble.
And someone leaking a confidential design likely wouldn't leave the "Confidential" in there, or at least that's what I think.

In the end, people are likely to see connections where there aren't any. God knows how many thousands of fake designs there are out there, too.

My thoughts? It's an old draft that got scrapped early on in development, and the artist leaked it because they knew it had gotten ditched.
I don't think that the company would want to look full of holes by using a leaked design when they had just short of a year and a half to make another design. Rabbit 1 and 2 have to exist, too, and Rabbit 4 is probably out there too.
 
I'm fairly certain it's already been confirmed the jet evo for Scrobunny is fan-made. Besides, why would a Gen 8 mon have a size chart comparing it to the SM protagonist?


I do like the idea of it becoming Fire / Steel tho. A small theory roaming around is that the trailer foreshadows the future types, with Scorbunny running on steel gears, Sobble staying invisible like a ghost and Grookey banging on a rock
The Bewear has the protags from XY on it, if the pic is true, it could be they used it as reference material like they did for bewear.
162867

AFAIK, this was posted last year, and there was a link to someone's facebook and instagram, so Im like 95% sure this is an old fake that just so happened to concidently look like a later revealed Pokemon.

That being said, I would love it if Scorbunny evolved into a fast Fire/Steel type. If Kartana has showed me anything, its that fast offensive takes on normally slow typings aint a bad idea!
Do you have the links? I wasn't able to find it anywhere or anything but if there is something it would be good to put this issue to rest for good.
 

Pikachu315111

Ranting & Raving!
is a Community Contributoris a Top Smogon Media Contributor
... Okay, if I wait till Sunday I'll have 20+ pages to respond to. @~@ Can't respond to everything but I can at least knock out a few pages now:

Starters are a fire rabbit, a water lizard, and a grass monkey.
While I'm not sure if Scorbunny and Grookey is based on a specific rabbit or monkey, for anyone wondering Sobble is based on a Veiled Chameleon (explaining that head decoration and able to turn invisible, because for some reason chameleons can turn invisible instead of just colors in the Pokemon world):


From the looks of it I'd guess the region was based on somewhere in the Scandanavian region.
While by now we've all been proven it's indeed based on the UK, I also at first thought it was a Scandinavian region due to the clothing (especially the male trainer's hat). :)

I know it says "Not final game footage" but the direct has shown mons like Tyranitar, Munchlax, Lucario, Minccino, Hoothoot, Grubbin, and Pikachu in the games. If all of those are actually in the games, I wonder how expanded will be the regional dex
I'd imagine we'd probably have 400+ Pokemon as the past two games had. Though hopefully we'd have better distribution this time around.

Looks like it'll be pretty linear, but it'll be interesting to see what they do with it.
Maybe linear in progression, but the locations look BIG so probably full of places to explore. Also as we get further up there looks to be more and more "off to the side" places. I'll do a heavier dissection of the map on Sunday (hopefully).

Not to exaggerrate or anything but I can and will die for Sobble.
I've seen this image going around (there's also one with Scorbunny, though not one with Grookey):


ALSO: Ferris wheel in an end-game part = battle frontier. Change my mind.
Wasn't what they used a Ferris Wheel for last time...

First of all, if you aren't part of GrassStarterMasterRace I do not aknowledge you as my friend.
Let's not bring up fascism... :(

"I...AM...GROOKEY!"
Yeeup, been expecting some of those after seeing Grookey's name.

Boy, another region where we won't get an Ice-type until 20 minutes before we challenge the league.
You say that but from the start the player characters are in cold climate clothing (yet the girl still wears a leg revealing skirt...) so we may get some early Ice-types here and there.

you're going to not get aegislash in the regional dex and you're going to like it
They're going to have a side quest that involves you showing someone a Aegislash like how Sun & Moon had you need showing someone a Solrock/Lunatone.


can't wait for the evil team to just be the tories
Well they can't be knight crusaders as we already did that trope, lol.
Maybe they'll be Eurosceptics...

Team Brexit
Shedinja'd, thought it was an obvious joke.
... You don't think they'll go THERE for the villain team, do you? If you don't know who I'm talking about, here's a hint: WWII.

I thought they were the symbol of more Scandinavian people (Vikings come to mind but I'm sure that's not it).
Could it be the villain team will be Scandinavian-themed?
Remember they do often through in some other locations from other places around the world (Unova was especially notable for this), and being I doubt GF wants to do every part of Europe wouldn't be surprised if they combined various parts of Europe into Galar. Most of it is the UK, but don't be surprised to see stuff from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, etc..

Having a British region makes me really want at least a couple of Tolkien shout-outs. His work “On Fairy Stories” sought to disprove the misconception that “Fairy” only consisted of the tiny sprite creatures we’re used to thinking about, so maybe it paves the way for an awesome Elf-Knight fairy type at least.
Or we could also have some Shakespear's portrayal of fairies. How about we have Oberon and Titania as the psuedo Legendaries. Maybe throw in Puck somewhere in there. ;)

Ohmori is in charge. This means more of ORAS/SM dumbfuckery. I do not expect any postgame, there will be even more dumbing down (I'm not talking about QoL changes here), and there's a legit chance of innumerable cutscenes. Hopefully we'll be able to skip this time.

No overworld pokemon, no following pokemon. So the cool bits of LGPE were trashed. They do not even have a proper excuse considering SM had all those walking/running animations.

GYMS ARE BACK FFS WHY. I don't care if the Trials would not be back because they're cultural-specific; just do literally anything else instead of resurrecting obsolete shit.
I'm willing to give Ohmori another shot, see what he learned from directing Gen VII. Also I have a feeling they are less pressured with Gen VIII then they were with Gen VII, they'd had plenty of time to work on it (thanks to Let's Go buying them an extra year) and they aren't exactly under a time limit of needing to get it out for a major anniversary event. Like they can push back Gen VIII's date and it wouldn't be a big deal unlike SM which was being released for the 20th Anniversary.

(Also, what will the abbreviation for Sword & Shield be? Because following normal conventions we get SS... yeah, that's not going to do (especially for a region based in Europe). How about SwSh?)

Yeah, sad to see the good stuff from LGPE is not being included. I can only guess that since both games were being developed at the same time they didn't want to mix new mechanics. Maybe in the third version/second paired versions.

Who says they can't innovate the Gym system? I don't see anything wrong with the Gym system besides it needing some updates. What would you suggest instead?


Starter's Final Type: I've seen a few posts trying to guess the Starter's Final Typing, and of course the worries of Scorbunny being Fire/Fighting, but here's something I hadn't seen suggested: maybe they'd be pure Types? I feel this might especially be true for Scorbunny and maybe Sobble. Grookey could become a Grass/Fighting though so it can swing bigger and bigger sticks.
 
Look what they did...

View attachment 162793

Blatant plagiarism and such a disappointing trailer. I was never so disappointed in a mainline Pokémon game release trailer.

The graphics from the actual gameplay footage (not the starter bits), were lower quality than Gen 7, and it is in the switch... ughh.
Don't see how its plagiarism, because these are characters are clearly vastly different. I didn't notice the similarities until someone pointed it out. Its most likely a coincidence since the Powerpuff Girls are a western show, and GF probably hasn't heard of it since they are primarily Japanese. I know there was a Japanese Anime called Powerpuff Girls Z which was based on the original western show, but I don't think it was that popular for enough for GF to want to reference it.

And if they are, it wouldn't be the first time GF has been lazy with character designs, such as Roggenrola=Geodude, Timburr=Machamp, Bouffalant=Tauros, Ninetales and Zoroark being based off Kitsune, and Mimikyu being a literally being just clad in cloth to resemble Pikachu are some of the lazy designs I can think of.
 

Champion Leon

Banned deucer.
Don't see how its plagiarism, because these are characters are clearly vastly different. I didn't notice the similarities until someone pointed it out. Its most likely a coincidence since the Powerpuff Girls are a western show, and GF probably hasn't heard of it since they are primarily Japanese. I know there was a Japanese Anime called Powerpuff Girls Z which was based on the original western show, but I don't think it was that popular for enough for GF to want to reference it.

And if they are, it wouldn't be the first time GF has been lazy with character designs, such as Roggenrola=Geodude, Timburr=Machamp, Bouffalant=Tauros, Ninetales and Zoroark being based off Kitsune, and Mimikyu being a literally being just clad in cloth to resemble Pikachu are some of the lazy designs I can think of.
It would be a coincidence if it was 1, or maybe 2 of the starters, but all 3, from the same franchise? Corresponding to the matching colors per character? C’mon man, even the pose/stance is a fit.

As for lazy, we already have an example of Gen 8- Meltan: Silver Ditto with a Roggenrola or Unown “O” head.

As more get revealed it might help us know if they are copying other work.

Plus we already know they have copied other franchises: Mega Evolution is similar to Digimon (the devices used to evolve the creatures, fusing humans with creatures (like Nihilego possessing Gladion’s mom etc.)

The trailer sucked, the ideas are obviously a copy.

Let’s hope they don’t just make the Gen 8 cover legend a version of Aegislash’s 2 shield/sword forms. (Looking at the logo, it appears to be the same head / creature).
Now that would be even more disappointing.

Critique complete! ;)
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 1, Guests: 4)

Top